[ { "id": 208321, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "MILITARY EDUCATION IN CHINA, 1842-1895\n\n29\n\nthe Yalu River in mid-September, 1894, China and Japan each had twelve ships, but the encounter was no contest. China's problem was less the quality of her ships than the lack of an effective command structure, poor communications, cowardice (on the part of Liu Pu-ch'an), poor training, and ammunition shortages.\" Chinese firing was comparatively effective, especially in the early stages of the fighting, but too often the shells were faulty. At Wei-hai-wei, in early 1895, the situation was even more grim. By this time, the war had been lost, and Chinese naval forces were completely demoralized, even mutinous.92\n\nChina's use of foreign talent could not remedy her military deficiencies. Unlike the Japanese, who succeeded in eliminating reliance on foreigners entirely by the outbreak of the war, the Chinese were forced to continue using them on both land and sea. A surprising number served, in spite of the existence of various neutrality ordinances and foreign enlistment acts.93 At one point, the Ch'ing government even contemplated establishing an army of 100,000 Chinese troops under 2,000 foreign officers—an effort, in the words of the North-China Herald to \"re-create an Ever-Victorious Army” under Constantin von Hanneken.94 Predictably, however, the plan met heavy opposition from Ch'ing officials, including Li Hung-chang, and it was never implemented.95\n\nIn all, the Sino-Japanese War was a disaster for China. Yet there were optimistic voices to be heard even in the midst of China's despair. The journalist, Wang T'ao—as shocked as anyone by Japan's sudden victory—undoubtedly spoke for many reform-minded Chinese in expressing the hope that defeat by the Japanese would finally shake China out of her lethargy. National humiliation was a prelude, he felt, to meaningful change,\n\nThe alliance between Chinese nationalism and agitation for reform, was evident in many sectors of Chinese society during the first few years following the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The writings of newly-politicized Chinese intellectuals, as well as the publications of the burgeoning Chinese periodical press, reflected these related concerns.97 The immediate post-war era also witnessed the proliferation of Chinese reform associations and study groups. Even remote Szechwan was touched by the reform spirit. In late 1896, a group of gentry members issued a manifesto which called for the abolition of footbinding and argued with tortured but telling logic: \"The present is no time of peace. Foreign women have natural feet,\n\nPage 30 is missing, actual page number in original text is \"45\" and \"46\"\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212020, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 435, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "410\n\nenhances our understanding of Chinese rural society. The Chapter on 'Landlords and Tenants' provides a fresh look at the complex social structure and pattern of power distribution in the villages. The Chapters on 'Inflation' and 'Rural Marketing' contain useful information and provide food for thought. One issue that is central to the study of peasant livelihood in South China is that of overseas remittances. This is mentioned in passing and should be given more attention. The important question is: what purposes did overseas remittances serve and did they increase the peasants' ability to maximize opportunities in trade? On the question of rural indebtedness, Faure refers to a 1930 study conducted by the Shanghai Social Affairs Bureau which revealed that ‘although a substantial proportion of the poor, in this case, the tenants, were in debt, they owed considerably less than the better-off, the owner-cultivators and half-owners', (p. 146). This is not surprising because the poor lacked collaterals and were therefore unable to contract substantial loans. I find it difficult to accept Faure's bold conclusion that ‘the extension of credit was a sign not of impoverishment but of growing opportunities', (p. 148). This statement is definitely too absolute and not sufficiently substantiated.\n\nOn the whole, it is obvious that a lot of research effort has been put into this work. While one should give Faure the credit for amassing a wealth of evidence in support of his case, it does not necessarily follow that one needs to subscribe to his views in an unreserved manner. As mentioned, the 'optimists' will welcome this piece of work for the fresh evidence it presents. The inadequacy of some of the arguments, on the other hand, will provide the 'pessimists' with a chance to fire back and reinforce their stand. All in all, this book will certainly serve to elevate the unending debate on China's rural economy to a higher level of intensity and refinement.\n\nALFRED H.Y. LIN\n\nNOTES\n\nE.H. Carr, What is History? (Pelican Books, Great Britain: Cox & Wyman Ltd., 1964), P. 23.\n\n2 Chen Qihui, Guangdong tudi liyong yu liangshi zhanxiao (Land Use and the Production and Distribution of Food in Guangdong) in Xiao Zheng, Mingguo ershi niandai Zhongguo dalu tudi wenti zilliao (Source Materials on Land Problems in Mainland China in the 1930s) (Taibei, 1977), Vol. 50, pp. 25705-10, 25715-17. Guangdong jingji nianjian bianzhuan weiyuanhui, Guangdong jingji nianjian [Guangdong Economic Yearbook for 1940] (Guangzhou, 1941), 1:(K)42-49.\n\nPage 435\n\nPage 436", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214123, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "ARE THE TANKA PEOPLE DESCENDANTS OF MONGOL SOLDIERS?\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n161\n\nI have not done any research into the origins of the Tanka people of the Pearl River Estuary and have always assumed from something I read many years ago that ethnically they were one of the many original minority groups of southern China.\n\nHowever, I have just come across a paragraph in 'Pulling Strings in China', a book written in the late twenties by W.F. Tyler, suggesting that the Tanka boat people were a mixture of Mongol soldiers and Chinese with whom they had intermarried. Tyler was an interesting character, an Englishman who had been not only a young officer serving with the Chinese Imperial Navy during the Yalu battle in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 but had gone on to be a Commissioner with the Chinese Maritime Customs.\n\nThe relative passage from the paragraph concerned claims that:\n\n*\n\nIn about 1370 the conquering Ming dynasty ordered that the soldiers of the previous Mongol garrisons - descendants of the famous hordes of Ghengis Khan - and their families should be slaughtered. At Canton there had been intermarriage and absorption in a century of Mongol rule, and enmity was dead, so there was reluctance to fulfil this drastic order: consequently it was reported to the capital that they had been driven into the river, and by inference, drowned. They were not drowned; they were allowed to live in boats and in piled shacks below high-water line. And so they lived and bred and grown for five hundred years or more, and it was no one's business to institute a change. These were the Tankas; fine-looking men and pretty girls”.\n\nHas any reader confirmation of Tyler's story?\n\nNOTE\n\nTyler, William Ferdinand Pulling Strings in China Constable London 1929", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216418, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "127\n\n## BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS: CHINA AND THE CHINESE DURING THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR 1904-1905\n\n## KEITH STEVENS\n\nThe power confrontation between Russia and Japan finally developed into all-out conflict in 1904 in Manchuria, ending with a victory for the Japanese that shook the western world, who had assumed that no Asian power could possibly defeat a European one.\n\nApart from on the high seas, the Russo-Japanese War was fought in the main on Chinese territory, in the three provinces of Manchuria, homeland of the Manchus, now known as Dongbei, the North-east. China was not a participant. The first stage of the land campaign took place in Korea, where Japan landed an army, which fought its way up the peninsula to the northern border, the Yalu River, and on into Manchuria for the long slog to victory.\n\nSince the Manchu conquest of China in 1644, the Three Provinces, Fengtian (renamed Liaoning), Jilin, and Heilongjiang, originally the homeland of the Manchus, was known to westerners as Manchuria, and although referred to as part of the Chinese (Qing) Empire, it was not considered to be part of China Proper.\n\nDuring the 19th century, the population of Manchuria grew by leaps and bounds as Chinese settlers flooded in, particularly from Shandong province, encouraged to occupy its wide open spaces before the Russian advance could extend its influence into the area.\n\nIn 1931, at the time of the eventual Japanese occupation of the whole of Manchuria, the population was estimated to have been more than 90% Han Chinese, with a mere 3% Manchus. The rest was made up of 6% Mongols and a handful of Japanese, Russians, and Koreans.\n\n## The lead-up to the war\n\nThe Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 ended the Sino-Japanese War, fought under the guise of securing the independence of Korea, and included the cession to Japan of the Liaodong Peninsula. This", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216420, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "129\n\nChemulpo (later Inchon). This would drive north along thawing and impassable roads, across the Yalu River into Manchuria, heading for Liaoyang and Mukden (now known as Shenyang) north of the Liaodong peninsula. Then, with what remained of the Russian fleet bottled up in the harbour at Port Arthur, the second and main force would be landed some thirty miles north of Dalny (Dairen to the Japanese and now known as Dalian) cutting off Port Arthur at the tip of the Liaodong peninsula. The final stage was the landing of a third Japanese army in January 1905 and its assault on Port Arthur. The war began as planned with a Japanese 'Pearl Harbor' bombardment at Port Arthur, taking the Russian fleet by surprise.\n\nAlthough the Japanese met with a number of set-backs their overall plan succeeded. The crowning moments were the Fall of Port Arthur at the beginning of January 1905 and the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, the titanic clash between the Japanese fleet and the Russian Baltic Fleet, the latter having made its slow progress across the world from Latvia in October 1904 to Tsushima seven months later, and to its fate and destruction. News of the devastating Japanese victory alarmed a number of Chinese officials who, whilst they did not wish Japan to lose, had not wanted her to gain such an overwhelming victory.\n\nFinally, after the eighteen month campaign the land war ended with the destruction of the Russian army before Mukden. The succeeding months were a matter of Japanese mopping-up operations and the capture of Liaoyang and Mukden.\n\nDuring the final stages of the war the Japanese finally took the fighting on to 'sacred' Russian territory when they invaded the large island of Sakhalin. This was of great political importance as it was regarded as Russian territory and, with rioting on the streets of the Russian major cities, the Russians realised that they had lost. Also at that point, Japan now holding most of the cards, but militarily and financially exhausted, sought President Roosevelt's good offices to bring about a peace conference. This took place in September 1905 concluding with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in the United States. The Russians ceded the Guandong peninsula (Chinese territory) and half of the island of Sakhalin to Japan but without having to pay any indemnity. The Russians, so the Japanese believed, had been allowed by the Americans to get away without paying any financial compensation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216434, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "143\n\nof the natives and made a very favourable impression was in the prohibition of religious propaganda on the part of [foreign] priests.\n\nForeign bias towards the Japanese\n\nThe great majority of western correspondents in the field would appear from their reporting to have had Japanese sympathies. British illustrated histories regularly contained favourable reports on individual scenes and acts by Japanese forces. They were frequently praised for humanitarian acts and regularly reported as having paid particular care in their treatment of and friendly relations with the Chinese population.\n\nA western observer reported that 'in May 1904 prior to the Japanese assault on Dalny (Dalian) a Japanese sergeant made his way into the Chinese quarter, and by spreading news of a great Japanese victory and a quickly arriving Japanese army, induced the residents to fly the Japanese flag, and so stampeded the Russians.'\n\nThe Japanese fought their way for three months, up the Korean Peninsula, stormed across the Yalu in April 1904 and set up their Headquarters in Andong, a Chinese town of some size. Here, stores of all sorts were purchased from the Chinese, though at an exorbitant cost. Chinese coolies, laden with military stores, competed with bullock carts, similarly laden, crowding the road now filled with marching troops and empty carts returning from the front. Coolies and carts were plentiful as they had no problem working for the Japanese who paid promptly, unlike the Russians.\n\nIn general, the lives of Chinese coolies were wretched and the Japanese Army commander issued an order reminding his troops that they were fighting the Russians and not the Chinese, and that they should remember they were fighting an enemy in the country of their friends. A Japanese report claimed that in Manchuria, as in Korea, they had made full use of Chinese coolie labour but had worked their coolies as transport carriers in the same scientifically humane way they worked their horses. After three months of unremitting labour the carrier coolies, well fed, well treated, at a daily wage five times as high as they had been accustomed to earn, and so well looked after that there had been only 2% of sickness among them, were in better condition than when the campaign began.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]